Tourney and Balance Release v1.2.7.0

2v2 Tourney

The month's 2v2 tourney concluded this weekend. If you missed it (sadly, there were no news posted before it started), you can find more information about it in the tourney thread, view the results on Challonge, and review the commentated replays on ShadowFury's youtube channel.

Balance

This very has some small and no so small changes. The small changes are minor tweaks to bot factories and the large changes are to sea and gunships.

Shieldbot

Bandit is due a minor buff and Dirtbag is now armed to add options to the Shieldbot opening. The aim is to increase Shieldbot diversity. This may involve an eventual Felon nerf.

Dirtbag:

Cost 35 -> 30

Is now armed with a 25 DPS melee attack.

Sight distance 200 -> 300

Bandit:

Cost 80 -> 75

Range 240 -> 245

Outlaw:

Speed 1.5 -> 1.9

Jumpjets

Jumpjets is becoming a reasonable factory but is carried by Pyro. The solution is to hobble the one trick pony. Pyro has only recently become a legitimate raider so this change is experimental.

Pyro:

Health 700 -> 620

Moderator:

Range 410 -> 420

Significantly increased turnrate and turret turnrate.

Jack:

Cost 650 -> 600

Gunships

Now that Planes work well we have set our sights on a reasonable Gunship factory. The main thrust of these changes is to make Gunship AA stand up to fighters so a Gunship switch is not instantly countered by opponents who simultaneously switch to Planes.

Plane HP and dedicated AA damage were both reduced by 9%. This effectively makes dedicated AA worse against Gunships and flex AA better against Planes. Krow HP was also reduced by 9% as it mostly interacts with dedicated AA.

Rapier:

Reload time 4s -> 5s

Deals 570 Slow Damage.

Brawler flies a bit higher and

Speed 4 -> 3.7

Range 500 -> 600

Weapon velocity 450 -> 420

Projectiles explode at range (like Flak, Warrior and Stardust).

Trident rework:

Cost 400 -> 270

Health 1500 -> 900

Shoots 540 burst damage with 10 second reload.

Speed 3.6 -> 3.8

Drones

Drones (Funnelweb, Companion, Reef):

Drones now spawn as nanoframes suspended above the parent unit.

The nanoframe builds itself and completes after 3 seconds.

Spiders

Tarantula:

Reload Time 2 -> 1.9

Damage 200 -> 220

Cloakybot

Another minor Rocko nerf (the last one was 5% projectile velocity). This should be the last nerf for a long time.

Rocko:

Health 480 -> 450

Range 460 -> 455

General Sea Changes

Sea has been reworked with promises from RyMarq to track how it plays and make future improvements. Ships have been rewritten and the sea aspects of Amph and Hover have had changes as well.

Sonar ranges are now significantly lower. This is to increase the sneakiness of underwater units.

Sonar Station:

Cost 120 -> 40

Sonar Range 1600 -> 600

Urchin tweaked to be lighter. It is still powerful, but far less defining of sea gameplay.

Cost 160 -> 100

Range 590

Sonar Range 300

Damage 295 -> 180

Now has some AoE

Ships

Many ships with particularly low turn rates have had their turn rate increased to be more usable. Many more ships have been reworked.

Skeeter has has a disarm effect and slightly lower normal DPS.

Hunter has become more of a traditional riot unit. It has fairly traditional riot attributes such as AoE and low range. No longer will it dominate everything forced to travel in the water.

Snake is now properly setup as a raider. Less cost and lower stats with more speed.

Enforcer is now a powerful artillery/skirmish unit, capable of firing a salvo of powerful missiles at long range. Weak tracking makes it effectively countered by raiders and other fast units.

Typhoon is more of a traditional assault unit with a slower speed but powerful damage output and increased toughness.

Serpent is much cheaper so should see use earlier. Is now more cleanly countered by those units which can close on it, especially raiders like Duck and Snake. It has had most aspects of it reduced to compensate, including range and speed.

Amphibious

Most notable as far as amphib is concerned are the Sonar range reductions and improvements to the Claymore (which now effectively counters many of their units). The Scallop's underwater weapon is reworked into a salvo of easy to miss explosives.

Conch:

Cost 210 -> 180

Scallops now fires a burst of explosives underwater. They gradually accelerate to high speed and have trouble tracking fast enemies.

Hovercraft

Hover primarily had the Claymore adjusted to be more effective against underwater units.

Claymore is now less suicidal with an improved turnrate and slower depth charge. To compensate it deals less damage.

Pyro's HP is now kinda just a bit under the line, maybe circle it onto 650?.

Rapier - Does it now only do slow or is it a diffrent attack? Because rapier was a cheap(est) defensive missile gunship and was thou squishy vauluable for defending bases(I pretty much used it as a gunship version of swifts :D).

I dislike that much of sonar change(should put it to 800 at least), you should changed the cost accordingly, maybe a 100, or even 75(since it now covers very low compared to even basic radar), and the sonar range on urchin is just asking for trouble..Urchins were the Stinger equailent of the defence vs underwater units, so could we get 2-3 types(light/medium/heavy) with each having more devastating effect on both price they cost and damage they do.

Snake/Serpent these 2 are slipery bastards, both changes made them both very good and very bad(I was thinking something more of swift version sub, no sonar feedback)...

Skeeter change, well, how do I put this together... they got no more for me if they can't deal normal damage.. these were weak scouts that normaly nobody worries about, untill the enemy rushes you with a swarm of them and a pack of them passes your def line and proceed to level your mexes/eco.

Enforcer- LOVE IT! I was bitching every game when I had to build them about their useless ness, short range, slow as hell, and no good AoE, but this, LOVE IT!

Sea should not have advantage over land,leviathan is almost impossible to counter in the mid-late game where the nukes are commonly appear, this turns game in epic cluster-fuck, lag-fest and boring stalemate. Reef is still reachable to kill, but in most of the cases it is far behind cost effective kill.

Sea should not have mobile anti-nukes, we should make regular anti-nuke floatable and buildable on water with 0 extra effort.

Can we please see other improvements I suggested before?- make aspis/eraser able to go sea

- make roache/tick/scuttle/ultimatum swim and make roache/tick invisible under eraserThis itself will open a couple of new strategies and make game more interesting(screening heavy units, proper micro, not just retarded reefs spam)

- sea has striders(reef and warlord) so why can't we allow ultimatum be a counter to unprotected striders?

- cloaked units should be invisible inside water the same they are on land

- heavy striders should be able to walk sea like land with lower speed without ability to use weapons(dante, bantha, scorpi, detri)I'd like to keep the current detriment design: an ability to hit underwater units, as an exception for this unit - the most powerful strider in the game.

- I'd like to see sea commanders back(torpedo), why we can use coms on land but we can't on water? Looks like synthetic limitation.If they are too OP, swimming scuttles, roaches and ticks or even an ultimatum, give ability to deal with them easily.

Outlaw is faster so it can keep up with Rogue, Thug and Convict. This may allow people to put riots in relatively fast armies (1.9 speed). Previously Outlaw was as slow as Felon and once you have slowed your army down to 1.5 speed you may as well make a FelonBall. A faster Outlaw should also give Shields a smoother transition from the raider game (instead of just making Felon Convict behind Bandits).

quote:Can we already wipe anti-nuke off from leviathan and reef?

I like a few difference between sea and land. I agree that Leviathan is a bit too sneaky to have an antinuke and perhaps Reef antinuke range is too long. There are no land mobile antinukes because they are impossible to detect when cloaked. At least in the sea sonar is unjammable.

quote:- make aspis/eraser able to go sea

What? They are already amphibious.

quote:- make roache/tick/scuttle/ultimatum swim and make roache/tick invisible under eraser

- sea has striders(reef and warlord) so why can't we allow ultimatum be a counter to unprotected striders?

I don't want to add amphib units from random factories. Swimming Roach/Tick/Skuttle would not make much sense and how would they burrow to cloak? Amphib versions would only be good against Amphibs. Ultimatum firing from underwater sounds like a good idea.

quote:- cloaked units should be invisible inside water the same they are on land

It is harder to bump decloak with the 3Dness of sea. I think sonar being unjammable is fine.

quote:- heavy striders should be able to walk sea like land with lower speed without ability to use weapons(dante, bantha, scorpi, detri)

I don't see why, it would most likely look silly. Perhaps use a Djinn if you want to suddenly attack the shore.

quote:- I'd like to see sea commanders back(torpedo), why we can use coms on land but we can't on water?

The options would be boring and sea balance is not set enough to know what a reasonable torpedo is. Also the torpedo has to be unlocked so new players are at a significant disadvantage.

GoogleFrog why do we differ sea and land so much?Why should my com be totally defendless in sea, let's remove all land weapons from coms too then. There should be equality in things if we want a balanced game.

People will still ignore and hate sea part of the game unless there will be fair balance between sea/land.

quote:why do we differ sea and land so much?Why should my com be totally defendless in sea, let's remove all land weapons from coms too then. There should be equality in things if we want a balanced game.

Why do you have to make things equal to make them balanced? Looks like every constructor should be able to cloak because otherwise Cloakybot will never be balanced compared to the rest of the game.